Goh Ling Yong : The Theology of a Well-Darned Sock - Goh Ling Yong
The hole in the heel of my favorite sock was not a tragedy. It was, however, an indictment. A small, frayed-edged oval of emptiness that accused me of carelessness, of participating in a world that uses things up and casts them aside without a second thought. This wasn't just any sock; it was a thick, marled-grey wool sock that had seen me through three winters, two continents, and one particularly brutal heartbreak. It had held its shape, kept its warmth. And now, its heel had given way, worn thin by thousands of anonymous steps. My first impulse was the modern one: toss it. My second was to sigh and add it to the sad, single-sock pile in the back of my closet, an orphanage for the once-paired.
But something held me back. I remembered a photograph of my grandmother, her hands a geography of wrinkles and veins, holding a smooth, wooden mushroom. A needle, glinting with purpose, moved in her fingers, weaving a new patch of fabric into the knee of my uncle’s childhood jeans. She wasn't just fixing a hole; she was performing a small, quiet act of devotion. She was saying, this is worth saving. You are worth the effort.
That memory, that quiet indictment from my own sock, sent me down a rabbit hole of YouTube tutorials and forgotten craft blogs. I bought a darning egg—a satisfyingly smooth piece of turned wood that felt ancient in my palm—and a set of blunt-tipped needles. I found a spool of charcoal-grey merino wool thread. I was going to save my sock. I was going to learn the slow, forgotten magic of making something whole again.
My first attempt was a disaster. I stretched the hole over the darning egg, feeling like a clumsy surgeon about to perform a novel procedure. The videos made it look so simple, so meditative. You lay down the first set of threads, the “warp,” straight across the chasm. Then, you begin to weave the “weft” threads over and under, over and under, creating a new patch of fabric where once there was only absence.
My warp threads were uneven, some sagging pathetically while others were guitar-string tight, puckering the surrounding fabric. My weft was a chaotic mess. I went under when I should have gone over. The needle, which had looked so graceful in the hands of the smiling woman on YouTube, felt like a railroad spike in my fumbling grip. The finished patch was a thick, lumpy scar that looked more like a medical oddity than a repair. It was ugly. It was wrong.
I almost gave up. The familiar script of failure began playing in my head. See? You can’t even fix a sock. You ruin things. You’re not patient enough, not skilled enough. Just throw it away and buy a new pair. It’s easier.
That voice was an old companion. It was the same voice that whispered to me after a major project at work collapsed, after a relationship ended not with a bang but with the quiet, suffocating fizzle of mutual disappointment. It was the voice that pointed out all the frayed-edged holes in my own character, the places where I had been worn thin by life, by my own mistakes. It told me those parts were unfixable, that the best I could do was hide them, or cut them out and discard them entirely.
But I looked at the lumpy, ugly patch on my sock. And I thought, well, it’s a patch. It might not be pretty, but the hole was gone. The sock could, theoretically, be worn again. It was no longer a piece of trash. It was a sock with a story, a flaw that had been tended to. So I tried again, on another sock from the orphanage pile.
Darning is a form of practical theology. It forces you to confront the nature of imperfection. The goal is not to erase the damage, to make the garment “good as new.” That is an impossibility. The memory of the wound will always be there, woven into the very fabric of the thing. The goal, instead, is to integrate the wound. To build a new strength where there was once a weakness.
As I practiced, my hands slowly learned the language of thread. I learned about tension. Too tight, and the patch becomes a rigid knot that chafes the skin. Too loose, and it’s a flimsy net that will unravel with the first wash. You must find the balance, a gentle give-and-take that respects the integrity of the original fabric while introducing something new. You are not imposing your will on the garment; you are collaborating with it.
This felt like a revelation. For years, my approach to my own flaws had been one of brute force. I would identify a weakness—my procrastination, my fear of conflict, my tendency to retreat into myself—and I would try to obliterate it. I would create punishingly rigid systems, berate myself for any slip-up, and try to weave a new patch of self that was impossibly, inhumanly tight. Inevitably, the tension would become too much. The patch would fail, and the hole would seem even bigger than before.
Mending taught me a different way. A gentler way. It taught me to first look at the hole with compassion. To see not just the failure, but the history. This sock is worn at the heel because it has carried me places. This sweater is frayed at the cuff because its sleeves have been pushed up for the hard work of living. My own character flaws were not alien invaders; they were the worn places, the scars left by my own journey. They were evidence of a life being lived.
With this new understanding, the act of darning became a meditation. The rhythmic pass of the needle, in and out, over and under, became a mantra. With each thread of the warp, I was laying down a foundation of acceptance. This is the wound. I will not pretend it isn’t here. With each weave of the weft, I was bringing in new strength, not to hide the hole, but to make it whole. I can tend to this. I can build something new right here.
I became a mender. My wardrobe transformed. The moth-eaten cashmere sweater my mother gave me was reborn with soft, geometric patches of blue thread at the elbows. A rip in my favorite jeans became an occasion for sashiko, the Japanese art of visible mending, its running white stitches turning a flaw into a feature. And my sock drawer, once a place of mismatched orphans, became a gallery of my work. Each darn was different, a unique signature of a specific time and place. There was the neat, almost-invisible mend from the winter I finally felt at peace in my own home. There was the slightly-too-tight, anxious patch from the week before a big presentation. And there was that first, lumpy, ugly repair—my favorite of all.
I wear that first sock often. I can feel the lump under my heel when I walk. It is not a perfect repair, but it is a perfect reminder. It reminds me that the first step to healing is not mastery, but a clumsy, earnest attempt. It is the willingness to sit with what is broken and, instead of throwing it away, to say, this is worth saving.
We live in a world that sells us the myth of the seamless. New clothes, new phones, new relationships, new selves. We are encouraged to discard anything that shows signs of wear and tear. We curate our lives on social media to hide the rips, the stains, the worn-thin places. We are taught to be ashamed of our scars.
The theology of a well-darned sock offers a different gospel. It tells us that a thing is not more valuable because it is new, but because it has been loved and used and, when it broke, was cared for enough to be mended. The mend itself becomes part of the object’s beauty, a testament to its resilience. The scar is not a mark of shame, but a badge of survival.
I am not the same person I was before I learned to mend. I still have holes. I am still, and always will be, a work in progress. But I no longer see the frayed parts of myself as indictments. They are simply invitations. They are the places that call for the needle and the thread. They are the opportunities to practice a quiet, patient, and deeply compassionate collaboration with my own imperfect self, weaving something new and strong, not to erase the past, but to honor the journey. And to walk forward, on two well-mended feet, into whatever comes next.
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